One way to start this business is to purchase a franchise.
In the last few years several franchise opportunities have popped up. Some of them are good, and some of them aren’t. They all have the normal trappings of a franchise. In other words, they all offer a method of operating the business that must be adhered to, a name to do business under, a territory  to which you must confine your business, and some training and support from the franchisor. In exchange for all of this you pay a fee to purchase the franchise ($12,500 for the lowest, up to $22,500 for the highest), additional fees for training additional employees or buying extra territory, an advertising fee, and a monthly royalty that can range anywhere from 2% to 8% of gross revenues.

We obviously recommend against purchasing a franchise,
even though we are typically very much
in favor of franchising.

In fact, when we began working to take our business national, we planned to franchise it. We decided against doing so, though, because we realized that many of the “benefits” of a traditional franchise model were not benefits in this business. In fact, they were a hindrance.

You see, there are normally five main benefits to a franchise,
or five reasons why you would normally want to buy a franchise, none of them are benefits in this business!

The first benefit to buying a franchise is that you are given a brand name to do business under. This is a phenomenal thing if you are buying a name that is well known, such as McDonalds. It’s worth paying good money for that kind of branding. If you are not buying a well-known and well-branded name, then it can actually be a hindrance. You derive no real benefit from the name and, what’s worse, when you own a franchise you are required to operate under the franchise name no matter what happens to it. You do not have the ability to build your own name or identity. If the franchise goes down, you go down with it. That’s a heavy risk to take when there is no real benefit realized by the name you’ve used to do business. In this industry there is no branded name yet. Being locked into a contract that requires you to do business under a specific name is a gamble at best.

The second thing that a franchise offers is a territory or area in which to do business, which is protected from competition from other franchise owners. Many people find comfort in the idea of “owning” a specific area. Unfortunately, it can be a detriment in this business because of the restrictions that are an inherent part of a system that includes defined territories. You see, we live in a society in which families are scattered. Parents live in one place and adult children live in many others. Because of this you do not want to be confined to a small territory. You are going to run into people who want you to help their mother, but she lives across town, or farther. Add to that the problem of advertising in a way that only touches your territory and you have a recipe for frustration. You certainly want to make sure that the competition from others who have the same method of doing business is limited, but in this business you do not want to be confined to a traditional franchise territory. Our membership program offer the best of both worlds: A limit on competition, but no limit on your business opportunities.

The third thing that a franchise offers is the opportunity, or many times the requirement, to buy additional products and/or services from the franchisor, at a pre-set or discounted amount.

For instance, if you own a McDonalds franchise, you buy buns, burgers, uniforms and much more from McDonald's Corp. It’s easy to justify the on-going royalty you pay when you are receiving these on-going benefits and opportunities from the franchisor.

But that’s another reason franchising is not the best way to go in this business. In this business there is nothing more to buy on a monthly basis.

Once you know how to run the business,
you begin to resent sending a percentage of your
revenues to the franchisor.

We did not want to be in a business in which the people  with whom we were doing business resented us.

The fourth thing the franchise offers is a system for doing business. This is a very important aspect of franchising and something that you definitely want. It’s always better to do business based on a successful model. You can get this without buying a franchise though. Our training and startup package is the finest in the industry and teaches a proven system for success.

The fifth thing that a franchise offers, which is also an important benefit, is on-going support from the franchisor, and other like-minded business owners (other franchisees). Having a network of people you can rely on is very important. But again, this is something you can get without having to buy a franchise. Our organization provides outstanding services and support.

After looking at each one of these factors, we decided that franchising our business was not the way that we wanted to go. What we offer gives you all of the benefits of franchising without the detriments of franchising.

Our innovative business model under our Membership Agreement gives you all the benefits of being involved with a first class franchise organization, but recognizes the traditional long-term tie-ins generally associated with franchise relationships simply make no sense in this service business. Franchise ownership makes complete sense in specialty service businesses requiring a high degree of technical know-how, daily on-going technical support and a dependable source of inventory, but not in our business of caring for seniors.